Mylinda’s Story
When Mylinda, a kindergartener at Southwest Leadership Academy Charter School, began our program in September 2018, she was already behind her more accomplished peers. She was able to identify and vocalize the sounds of only six letters and could write just over half of the upper- and lower-case letters in the alphabet. Over the first half of the year, she worked hard and, with the support of her in-class coach, Ms. Chepura, and Achieve Now reading specialist, Bridget, made steady gains. At our interim assessments, Mylinda had gained more than 50% in her ability to voice letter sounds and could write nearly all letters.
Most importantly, Mylinda started the year with no phonemic awareness, the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual units of sound in spoken words. Before students can begin to blend letter sounds into complete words, they must be able to recognize the sounds made by letters or groups of letters. Our kindergarten foundational skills program challenges students to build their phonemic awareness. As Mylinda puts it, she learned “the sounds to write so that I can know how to spell.”
Bridget reports that Mylinda was “very open and willing to learn and perseveres through her struggles.” These qualities paid dividends; in April, Mylinda completed the foundational skills program and graduated to our core phonics program. During her exit assessment, she demonstrated the capacity to decode three-letter words with short vowels in the middle, such as lid and pot. In this, she met all-important common core standards for the end of kindergarten.
Mylinda is now on track as a reader. In fact, she may be ahead of schedule: in the school year’s final months, she covered advanced kindergarten content and was introduced to concepts, such as consonant blends like br and spl, typically covered in first grade.
